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Music Execs Stressed Over Free Streaming
itwbennett writes "At the Digital Music Forum East conference, held Thursday in New York, music industry watchers gathered to puzzle anew over the continuing decline in music sales. 'We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years,' said Russ Crupnick, a president at the analyst firm NPD Group who spoke at the conference. Moreover, only about 14 percent of buyers account for 56 percent of revenue for the recording industry. In years past, the blame was put on digital music piracy. At this year's conference, however, the focus was on free streaming Internet services, such as Pandora, MySpace, Spotify and even YouTube."
...free streaming over the air, i.e. radio?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
and most of the music sucks! What else is there to say?
Funny that I bought most of the music in last 3 years after listening on Pandora.
What they don't get is - digitization has made me purchase just one good song from otherwise crappy album and hence paying only a dollar and not a full 10-20$ they used to charge.
Evolve or die. Invest more in services like Pandora and GrooveShark. A few lawsuits here and there will not get you to your former glory.
Greedy bastards. Just suck it up like everybody else is doing it these days.
They will clutch at every straw and leave no stone unturned in their quest to increase sales... except for the myriad ways that they are their own worst enemy. It will never occur to them that suing your own customers is not good for business. They will never think that what is in my opinion the obvious "buy-a-law" political corruption (designed to institute perpetual copyright) in which they engage makes people with a conscience decide not to support them.
They will never consider that threatening tens of thousands of people with lawyer letters demanding they either pay a settlement or face a lawsuit they could not possibly afford, with no regard for the fact that many of them were innocent, might earn them some ill will. Nor will they think that taking children to court and using interrogation procedures obviously designed to intimidate them is something that decent people don't care to reward financially.
Nope, it's them evil pirates, those horrible music streaming services, etc. Of course it is. That adequately explains everything.
It's at a base level and I openly acknowledge that, but I can't help but to smile when I see that they are showing signs of desperation. They deserve more failure than they are experiencing.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I for one use YouTube to "try before I buy" and if I was going to buy something I might not, all thanks to YouTube!
That said, I do buy a reasonable amount of music online, around $500 worth over the last year, so I can see where they got that 14% statistic from.
I for one think that piracy is wrong, but there are some people who don't think like that. If they want more money they are going to have to provide a better service, especially by dropping the price. Thanks to YouTube I can decide that it is not worth paying $15 for an album, drop that to $5 and I (and many others) will probably buy it.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
This sure sounds like management at my job trying to solve a problem.
A must be causing this! Oh not A? Must be C then! Damnit if it's not C then it's gotta be B causing all our problems!
Like gasping for air underwater...
14% of buyers accounting for 56% of business sounds pretty normal. They're called enthusiasts. And I would bet a lot of that 14% probably do a lot of free streaming too.
I'm guessing that I'm one of that 14% (I buy a new album every 2 weeks-ish lately), at least in the past three or four months. The main reason for that is that I started a job that involves a lot of sitting at my desk, and i listen to a lot of pandora.
The market is changing, diversifying and reducing the power of "blockbuster" artists, and that's scary for these companies. However, streaming services like pandora make it *easier* to make money off of a diversifying music market, by making it easier to find new music even as tastes narrow. Hopefully theyll figure that out sooner rather than later.
Maybe if you didn't make it such a pain to use your product by telling people when and how they can use it this wouldn't be happening? Also, I'd buy more music from you if you actually released what I wanted. Give me easy access to Svetlanov's recordings of Tchaikovsky's Symphonic Poem Manfred, or good recordings of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, Harpsichord Concertos and Orchestral Suites. The complete set of Beethoven's Sonatas, and Chopin's Nocturnes and Etudes at reasonable prices and we'll talk again. But alas, my local music store only has the latest on all the cruft that's out there now and only the first five seconds of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony*.
* I happen to own the full CD set of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Karajan playing all of Beethoven's Symphonies. Best recordings I've ever heard, ever.
Not a coincidence. I've discovered that I can live without "buying" music, and I will be damned if I give them another penny. Plus as many others have pointed out, the music sucks balls anyway. Who wants to listen to 90 year old "rock stars" cough up a lung, or pre-pubescent teenagers sing about the "angst" of a life they haven't even begun to live yet, or stupid "look at me being a gangsta is so cool but all my friends are dead or in jail" crap. They can keep it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The music industry is doing nothing to actually groom and foster music. My wife goes to bed every night with the same radio station on and I swear I have heard the same 5 songs repeated over and over and over and over again for the past 8 months to the point where I want to shove an icepick in to my eye. If you don't take risks and support more artists you're doomed to decay from the inside.
Doesn't this disprove the theory that getting movies and music free gets people to buy more?
I think that was shot-down a while ago, but people don't really want to hear it. In 1999, the music industry was getting $16.4 billion in sales revenue from CDs. By 2008, that had declined to $5.4 billion in CD sales, $1.5 billion in digital music sales, and another $1.0 billion in mobile ringtones sales. That works out to a gain of about $1 in digital music sales (not including mobile ringtones) for every $7 lost in CD sales. I've seen some studies claim that music pirates buy lots more music than non-pirates (one source claimed 12x as much music), but assuming this was causal (and not a symptom of big music fans being the first to become pirates), it's really hard to explain why the music industry got completely hammered in the past ten years - seeing over a fifty percent decline in sales revenue at the exact time that piracy was on the rise. Oh well, at least they might be making a little more money from music streaming services.
14% of music buyers accounted for 56% of revenue. How is that shocking? So you have some kids buying too much over-priced music. How is that new?
Oh that's right, you have "music execs" who either won't or can't do their job. Wait, how is that new? Maybe it's the reporter who jumped on some numbers and assigned the same meaning to them that "music execs" always give whatever numbers are handy. Or maybe a bad summary, but I'm now too bored to even spell out RTFA.
Would it help to use percent signs instead of spelling out "percent"? Word problems are hard.
I can tell them all why I'm not paying $18 per album: there's a thriving secondhand market and format conversion is easier than it used to be. I used to spend $1000/year on CDs. Now I'm mostly buying vinyl at thrift shops for a buck a disk. Someone's parents died and they don't have a turntable, so off it goes, and I find it. Granted, I don't always know if it's good before I buy it, but for a buck, I no longer need to; it becomes a great adventure. For the albums I really like, that's 10 MP3s for the price of one iTune. This won't work for those who need the latest releases or artists, but if you like classical, folk, or oldies, it's probably out there waiting for you.
Well the people who are streaming stuff for free, possibly a large portion of the consumer base, are the sorts who don't care about owning music. They just want to have something going and it doesn't matter if its one band or another. I think the sad reality is that a good portion of people just want to be able to listen to music for free and will jump on the easiest way possible. On the other hand, you have people who want to buy music but those people also care about the quality of what they buy. It's only natural for those people to flock to the same free avenues in order to filter through the crap because there is only so much money available that any one consumer can spend on music. The availability of legal samples is not the same among each genre. I'm a huge fan of metal but the problem is that there are way too many bands out there releasing new metal albums constantly. Sure I could just stick to the bands I know and buy their albums but then I wouldn't buy as many albums or get to listen to as many artists. Of course, the best way to expand my purchasing habits is to download stuff to try before I buy. Rather than having labels who post samples on their website with new releases, i have to rely on the band to post a couple of tracks in order for me to sample something legally. Too few bands even bother to post a single track.
'tis easier to blame than to improve.
Music has been declining in sales in the internet era, yes. However this doesn't mean that everyone is pirating. Back in the 70's and 80's there was absolutely nothing to DO except either watch network television, or listen to music. Now there is so much more to do, and music has been relegated to a smaller share of the market. I refute your theory.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How the hell can these people NOT KNOW what is causing the decline in sales? Get focus groups together, ask a lot of people and look at the sales data. Such things will point out exactly what the problem is with no guessing or uncertainty, and these things are not very expensive to do compared to the budgets of these players. It defies belief that they don't know their problem, whatever it is. Yet if the focus completely shifts from one year to another, they can't have a good idea of the situation, except if we are to believe that free music streaming is a phenomenon that has taken off in just the last year, which doesn't seem likely. More likely it's bad reporting or a show put on to influence laws or something like that.
Agreed. It's easy to just turn on last.fm or Pandora if I want to listen to some music. Spend a little time setting up the likes and dislikes and you can easily find new music that fits in with your own likes. Something that you are very unlikely to ever get off the radio since they only play their limited top 40 selection.
Number 1 is the recession that has been biting for the last few years. People are being squeezed - music is a discretionary entertainment purchase, petrol, groceries and rent (mostly) aren't. It isn't rocket science to deduce that in a deep recession, where many people are scared for their jobs and/or struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table, purchases of non-essentials get squeezed. Could be nothing to do with piracy, streaming or the (abysmal!) quality of most of what they are releasing at the moment.
Here are some interesting alternatives not mentioned so far:
Jamendo (CC music)
SomaFM (streaming)
BlueMars (streaming music for the space traveler)
I use the bottom two every day and go to Jamendo when my eMusic account runs dry for the month.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
And they're more concerned about the constrained supply of Bolivian Pink Flake. Music executives are what Charlie Sheen would be if he had no work ethic.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Doesn't this disprove the theory that getting movies and music free gets people to buy more? Music has been declining in sales coincidentally since people started downloading and finding free web alternatives
It also coincides with the rise of the DVD. Prerecorded video sales have skyrocketed at the same time that music sales fell. DVD sales went up because they introduced the format that wouldn't wear out. More importantly however, the price of buying films went down. I have seen many occasions where buying a DVD of a film was much cheaper than buying the CD soundtrack of that film. People have a limited budget, so if they are going to buy films, something else has to go.
Also, as I said in another post, people will be more likely to buy an individual track at 99c than an entire CD and that MUST affect their bottom line.
They will blame the decline on any culprit they can come up with, first it's piracy, then it's internet streaming (neglecting that they are paid more for streams than any other broadcast service and it neglects that radio doesn't even pay).
But what the decline is really tied to is that they stopped looking for innovative and new bands and started the whole new kids on the block / American idol create a 5 hit wonder who the company owns and gets paid almost nothing. They were so successful with this business model for a couple years and a couple big stars that they thought it was a sustainable trend. They then bet the entire industry on it and on the other began suing customers. Combined they have destroyed the entire music ecosystem. Many people stopped listening entirely and many many others stopped buying any affiliated music.
I figure the collapse will keep going for another few years before they realize what they did. At that point revues will be down more than 50% from the peak. Will they recover? I doubt it. The record company is dead. All they used to offer is post processing, production and advertising. The first two can be done with a computer and a couple hundred dollars in software, the last is a dead end. The demise of the current oligarch record companies is in sight.
What they produce most of no one wants and in particular wants to pay money for. Namely the DJ/Hip Hop trash that dominates "new music" that requires no band, no instruments, no music/lyrics and worse for the industry, has no attachment with the majority of the listening population. Add a recession and bingo! Music sales will collapse. It's also no surprise that there is little competent performing talent out there with the widespread collapse of music programs in K12.
It's a fun vicious cycle that will be perpetuated until they decide that the way to make zillions is to actually get back into the music business.
Perhaps then they should reconsider hiring marketing firms to create bogus youtube accounts (which go to great lengths to appear to be owned by trendy youths) to post full videos of their artists works. You can't complain about the medium if you are using it to your advantage...
... will it take to beat into their thick skulls the simple fact that the music those dolts are pushing onto the public sucks.
I try to listen to the radio, I really do, but I cannot for more than, maybe, an hour. During that hour I've probably listened to a half hour of commercials. I realize they have to pay the bills but the sheer number of ads one is forced to endure is ridiculous. Hell, many of the songs that the DJs are allowed to play are those that are used in commercials or are Autotuned to death (or both). At least after a couple of sessions of listening to local radio stations and almost giving up on music altogether I wind up re-discovering a forgotten CD or LP in my collection and revel in the way music used to be made.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Plus as many others have pointed out, the music sucks balls anyway. Who wants to listen to 90 year old "rock stars" cough up a lung, or pre-pubescent teenagers sing about the "angst" of a life they haven't even begun to live yet, or stupid "look at me being a gangsta is so cool but all my friends are dead or in jail" crap. They can keep it.
Every generation thinks THEIR music is perfect, the last and the next generation is junk. Those that grew up with rock&roll will love it until they die. And Justin Bieber is no worse than New Kids on the Block was in the 80s, we just like to forget. Same as that I used to like trance in the 90s, probably because it was all cool and electronic like. Eventually most people just freeze up in some form, this is the music you like and will always like. Come 2050 you'll be sitting in a retirement home humming old songs from the 1990s or whatever. And whatever it is teens listen to then, you won't like it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Former radio-listener here. I actually know of something quite like what you described. When I was in middle school/early high school (late 90s/early 00s), I listened to this station that played popular music, and the shtick was that people could call in and...it was either request, or up-vote music. I think it was more the latter. The station would then, in the space of an hour, play the top songs. Have you seen Total Request Live on MTV? I dunno if that's even still on (it's been nearly as long for me as the station), but they had a system much like that, but with videos. The only difference is, TRL eventually retired videos that had been on for quite a while, and it was daily. This station was hourly over and over and over and the only way to get a song off the air was to bury it.
Nowadays, I unfortunately hear a lot of the same songs when I do have to listen to the radio. Put one station on, and listen to it for short bursts over the span of a larger period, and I swear I hear the same song in gaps as short as maybe an hour and a half. And this station in question is an 'oldies' (60s-90s (oh my God music I grew up listening to is considered ancient now)) station. It's not like there's a lack of material at hand. It's always hits, chartoppers, and songs everyone knows. B-sides and other non-hits just don't exist at all. Let's take for example...Led Zeppelin. On this station, I'd hear "Stairway to Heaven" roughly 85% of the time there's any LP, and from there it just sorta bottoms out. I've heard "The Ocean" and "Over The Hills and Far Away" a fraction of the times I've heard "Black Dog" or "Rock & Roll" or whatever else I'm forgetting. I think I've heard "Achilles' Last Stand" exactly once (but that's a ten-minute song and eats into advertising space). This station even advertises its "Superhits of the Eighties" or "Megarock Chartoppers" or something else, as though this was a special thing of note. The few times I've used Pandora/last.fm has put out some hits, yes, but it's introduced me to new songs by artists I already know, and completely new artists similar to those I like already. I daresay that these things are the future of radio (or its evolution).
I keep getting emails about "SAVE THE RADIO" and all. As cold-hearted as it is for me to say, radio is already dead to me. Listening to a single station and hearing the same-old-same-old burns me out, and changing the station to something else is already heresy, and it's not like that improves things much. I don't like country, and that's every station that isn't pop music or talk radio around here. Radio has been obsoleted by my iPod+transmitter. Sure, the quality is terrible (yay cheap transmitter), but I control what I hear. I don't get commercials at all, and the best part? I can listen to it for a month straight and not hear a repeat track.
I haven't bought any from them in years, and I won't be buying any from them until they learn to behave themselves and place nice. If they want to sue pirates, that's there right, but I'll be damned if I'm financing those questionable law suits. Restrict the suits to people that are likely guilty of significant distribution and ask for a reasonable sum and I'll start buying music again. Until then I just won't buy anything and they can make whatever they can off of those free sites like Pandora.
Makes you wonder who they consider in their "industry"... I know a lot of people still paying for music. The difference between 20 years ago and now is, now they are paying for live shows, T-shirts etc... indie artists give away the music and profit off their fans good will. The days of a large record company investing $50k in an artist, forcing them to sign a horrible contract and then ripping them off for the next 20 to 30 years are over. Old fashion radio was dead 10 years ago, and now is so laden with payola that no-one listens to it. The ONLY chance the record companies have of surviving is embracing services like Pandora and Grooveshark. At least they get some money then. The fact of the matter is, with modern technology no one needs record companies anymore. For what it used to cost to record a single album you can build your own studio in your basement today. A few classes at a community college, post some MP3s to the internet and away you go.
Free streaming is not something of the last 5 years. Free streaming was invented more then 100 years ago. And recording of the free streaming (for which the music industry pays) has been done on a medium that was licenced free of charge.
I understand them. They see Banks and other industries getting a shitload of money, so they want some too. It is as if they are saying "Boo-hoo, competition is HARD! Please give us enough money and power so the money we make matches the slides we showed our shareholders (which is us)."
Well, if you don't like it, get out. But buying some politician is easier. Especially if the media is on your side and actually part of the whole process.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Suck it up and get over it, RIAA!
Come 2050 you'll be sitting in a retirement home humming old songs from the 1990s or whatever.
The real tragedy is that I'll be too arthritic to make the "2 Legit 2 Quit" sign with my hand while I do it.
Not a coincidence. I've discovered that I can live without "buying" music, and I will be damned if I give them another penny. Plus as many others have pointed out, the music sucks balls anyway. Who wants to listen to 90 year old "rock stars" cough up a lung, or pre-pubescent teenagers sing about the "angst" of a life they haven't even begun to live yet, or stupid "look at me being a gangsta is so cool but all my friends are dead or in jail" crap. They can keep it.
You know, there are other music genres besides Country & Western.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I hardly ever buy music anymore, and the reason has nothing to do with internet streaming. Nor does it have anything to do with piracy, or any of the other reasons they like to cite. It's simply that I already have plenty of music.
"Music" used to mean a physical object with a finite lifespan. Records wore out and needed to be replaced. Tapes wore out and needed to be replaced. But CDs changed that: you could play a CD as many times as you wanted, and the quality didn't change. You still needed to be careful not to scratch them, but ripping to computer solved even that problem. I now have my music collection on my computer, with various backups, and my music collection is now basically immortal. And once you have 100 or so CDs worth of music, you stop caring as much about continuing to expand your collection. Sure, I still get a new CD now and then when I come across something I really like, but far less often than I did 10 or 15 years ago. I have enough music now that if I wanted to, I could easily go for months without ever listening to the same recording twice.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
According to the figures that I've found by a quick search, the unemployment rate 5 years ago was around 5%. It's now around 10%. With a US workforce size of about 150 million, that's about 7.5 million more people without jobs. So that's a good chunk of their lost customers right there. Even those with jobs may be watching their budget more closely (especially with the price of food and a lot of other more important things going up, while salaries have kept stagnant) considering that we are in a recession.
So yeah, they may have lost 20 million customers, but it's beyond ridiculous to blame it on places like Pandora (that may even be helping their sales).
... is that most music these days stinks. Badly written, poorly performed, atonal noise. Why pay for crap?
Oh puhleeze. Even in they heydey of media buying, for every Elvis, Beatles, Madonna or Nirvana that was signed, there were 20 duds on the label that bled money. Labels went bankrupt, had to be bought by others to salvage a loss or just folded. You obviously weren't there, otherwise you would have known of the THOUSANDS of artists that never made it on a monthly basis.
It never was the profit orgy you romantically think it was. Business was, is and will ALWAYS be hard.
Pandora and other streaming services have to pay royalties, they don't get a free ride. They offer a whole lot more value, as so many people have noted, than the traditional pick-from-crappy-top-10 only business model. The bigwigs in the music industry cry a river every time someone challenges that. Slow learners.
We've bought a few tracks here and there, but my wife isn't all that computer literate, and I don't support Windows or Apple stuff.
So, for her to buy with confidence and know she isn't losing it and can use it again, it has to be pretty robust, but since Apple is actively hostile to Linux, it can't be iTunes.
They've got no brain, I'd have thought by now they'd have a clue.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
We have lost 20 million buyers in just five years
This is easily misleading. If Mr. Crupnick means "album buyers", he is more likely to be correct than if by "buyers" he meant total number of customers buying music. The fact that people can now easily purchase single songs when they previously were forced to buy entire albums in order to get only one or two songs they really wanted might have something to do with this. In fact, it might have everything to do with such a typically misleading music industry claim.
I use Grooveshark etc to listen to my music. But lets just say they managed to remove all traces of online music. Thats not going to make me go out and buy music, its simply going to make me hook up my digital radio and record and catalogue the music I like into mp3's. Besides making it easy for everyone to buy the songs they want online (which imo is still too difficult), there is nothing they can do.
Agreed. Last year I paid *over* $2000 for music, so that puts me probably not just on the top-14% of consumers, but probably on the top-1%. But like you do, I always check what I buy, I don't buy whatever random stuff are around. Youtube has neither good or bad effect, because it neutralizes its position by helping me decide to buy something or not. If youtube didn't exist, I would probably buy LESS.
What's the killer though is that 80% of my new music these days is downloaded for free from BandCamp rather than bought. Not because I don't want to buy (I've can prove that I do to anyone who would check my iTunes and Amazon receipts), but because the KIND of music I listen these days very rarely can be found on iTunes, and to much less extend, on Amazon. I started listening to obscure indie bands that record at home, and these people just do music for fun, and so they often don't charge any money for it.
More importantly, it's that THESE musicians are pushing the boundaries of music, since they don't have to answer to any music exec. 95% of popular music will never win me back, so for these execs mentioned in the article, I'm already a dead customer. Even if I spend so much money for music (since it's mostly for indie labels' music, and the rest is music I get legally for free).
I stopped buying music when the labels started sueing their best fans. Doesn't seem right to support that kind of company.
Drop it to $1. You trade value for volume. When you drop the cost so low, you don't need fancy distribution methods or the ability to 'reclaim' your music you lost. Charge $1 for the album DOWNLOAD...your hard drive goes belly-up without back-up and you need to re-buy. Puts the responsibility on the user...but they could offer a service to list everything you've paid to DL before for a quick 'fill-me-back-up' megadownload...for a price.
Companies love selling you the same thing over and over...this would let them. WHen it becomes cheap enough consumers don't mind either. For 5-10c/song I'd download separately on my blackberry just to avoid having to find a wire and transfer songs. For $1/song I'm certainly not going to.
But no, they're too busy complaining that $1 song sales have killed their industry. What it's really done is wasted the golden opportunity to make piracy more trouble than it's worth to the generation that IS their primary customer.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
And then, around 1998, I stopped. Not because I started "stealing" it. And not because I started listening to streaming music. I stopped because I had enough music. Enough music to fill a 100 GB iPod. If I listened to it continuously I'd be playing music for weeks without hearing a repeat. Why in the world would I buy any more?
As it is now I'll occasionally run across an old song I haven't heard for years. And wonder why. Buying more music, especially music that isn't as compelling to me as the old stuff, would be a waste of money.
I fully agree. Someone needs to put in an emergency call to Whine-1-1 for these babies.
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Ahh...but you walk a dangerous road. I'm playing devil's advocate here, not trolling.
What's 'significant' distribution? In theory anyone offering a song on P2P is offering it to millions. How many connect to them? What's the cut-off? Does it apply if you only upload a chunk, not a full song?
The whole cost model is broken, the whole distribution methodology has already been superseded by an effectively FREE one, and the rent-a-lawmaker politicians aren't going give up their under-the-table perks so we continue with the insanity.
The record companies are dead. This is nothing more than their death throes propped up by a bunch of laws that the majority of people either reject, disagree with, or outright flaunt their violations.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
It's all about the people and how much free time they have. For example, I grew up in the '80s, with Madonna. As any teenage girl of the time, I loved her look and music. I liked only a bit of actual rock, and mostly pop. The '90s were eurodance for me, and 2000s were adult, popularized, alternative rock. Everything I listened until 2009 was under the monicker of "popular" and "mainstream".
In 2009 I started listening to underground indie bands, and today I mostly listen to artists that record music at home, and not only don't even have a contract with an indie label (let alone a major one), but they don't think they will ever sell a single digital unit, so they give their album for free on Bandcamp.
When all that took place in my head, within the last 2 years, I'm now INCAPABLE of listening to pop music. I hate it. I hate 95% of mainstream music. I feel that the bedroom artists, that don't have to answer to anyone, are the true heroes who PUSH the boundaries to explore new kinds of music.
I'm a 37 years old. I don't look like a hipster at all (more like a fat computer-stricken geek). But because I had the time and will (no kids you see), I took the time to educate myself about new kinds of music. In the beginning it felt like random notes, completely hookless, but as the time goes by and you get accustomed to the sound, a new musical world will show up in front of you. After that tipping point (it took me over a year to get sonically there), you can never go back to the old style of music. It will sound too little, too cheesy, too kitch, too unintelligent.
In 1999:
Most people didn't have -- a smartphone with an expensive data plan -- an Internet connection, Cable, DSL, Dial-Up, -- and much to spend on video games
But did have -- the same (inflation adjusted) amount to spend on entertainment
All else being equal, has anyone done a study to see how people are spending their entertainment dollar and how it's changed over time?
-Dan
I mean, that is what they use to do. You took some talent, and then they would give them enough cash/money to pay some of their expenses while they were still getting developing their skills. They would get time between albums to practice and learn to play. There was actual talent required to make/perform the songs. Now it is if you get one song that is a partial success/hit, they have them release a full album, when there might be 2 songs worth anything on it, and then play those 2 songs over and over and over and over and over again on the radio. People get tired of it, and because the band really isn't that good, once people are tired of those 2 songs, that is it for the sales. And the music execs look for the next group that has 1-2 songs, rinse, repeat. No one gets a chance to actually gain skill. It is all about looks, not the music. Heck, they even put people out there who can't even sing, but use autotune to correct their voices and keep them on pitch... It is almost all a bunch of BS anymore. Where is the talent? Where are the mesmerizing guitar solos? Where are the vocals? It simply doesn't exist anymore because the industry doesn't develop talent anymore, they simply grind it up and spit it back out and move on to the next act.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Back when "streaming" was called radio, I imagine they were pretty happy with all the advertising they got, even if they did pay for it at times. Now there are enthusiasts creating radio stations and advertising for them, and these enthusiasts aren't getting a dime for doing it. They are even paying money out of their own pockets in many cases to keep their radio stations alive. I know I've found tons of music over the last few years listening to epicrockradio that I would have never otherwise found, and have purchased a fair amount of it in one form or another. Free fucking advertising, and these assclowns want to view this as a problem.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Also, as I said in another post, people will be more likely to buy an individual track at 99c than an entire CD and that MUST affect their bottom line.
It seems to me that this has to be a very important point for music producers. Most people I know that buy music from iTunes will hear a song on the radio and decide to buy 3 or 4 songs by that artist. That $4 is split between the producers, the artists, and Apple. It used to be that you had to buy the whole CD for around $25, and even with the costs of a physical medium the CD was probably not costing them over $20 to make. I'd imagine that even if they could increase the number of sales, they're still making less money per sale.
They keep suing their customers!! I will never buy music again for as long as it is possible (to not have to buy music). Sorry musicians, I will try to support you some other way. Besides, most art isn't about the money in the first place anyways.
Mumble mumble mum....
That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart... Music is all about taste, and even the Romans knew that you can't argue about taste. There's no point. Taste is entirely subjective. However in your first paragraph you mention free time. I argue that today's free time can be filled with so many things - from teenage girls taking pictures of themselves for facebook, to playing multiplayer online games, to browsing the internet, to blogging, etc. Back in the day free time was a) read a book b) listen to a record/cassette c) watch MASH reruns on TV or d) go to the movies. It's only logical to assume that strict music listening now occupies a much smaller share of our attention span today because our horizons have been expanded.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is true for metal, but not for indie rock music. Started in 2006, and exploded in 2009, almost all indie hipster bands given away from 1 to 3 free legal downloads per album, as promotion. That's how I got into indie music myself. This helped creating the so many indie music blogs out there, these legal free downloads. The metal scene doesn't have as many blogs, and therefore not as many free samples -- it's a bit chicken and egg problem. Plus older mentality I guess, from the bands and these older labels that run metal bands.
Anyways, Amazon has almost 10 free metal albums, with various artists in it, check them out. Email me if you need URLs.
Music execs: "This internet thing, what is it? It's destroying our sales! We must destroy it!"
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a result of old age and a refusal to adapt and evolve. They are destroying themselves by consistently denying and ignoring the only way for them to move forward. When a multinational, multi-billion dollar industry is forced on it's knees by services (originally) at least provided by geeks in basements, it's time to stop believing they have any credibility left.
but what I was buying I found on mp3.com back in the day. I like power metal, but it's so hard to find new bands. I know there out there, but there's lots of pretty lousy acts and even if funds were unlimited (there not) it's just too much bother to find them. I miss being able to just pull down a bunch of cool demo tracks from mp3.com from up and coming bands. Stuff like Dragonforce, Power Quest, Frostweaver (anyone but me heard of 'em? Only had 5 tracks).
I guess I got a taste of the good life (musically) in the 90s and it spoiled me. emusic was great while it lasted, but they've creeped up to to 50 cents a track and more. The economy's in the toilet. I don't have $30 month to blow on mp3s...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
And hey, the ability to listen to complete albums as much as I felt like led to the purchases that I've made there. Funny that.
Enough, otherwise the music industry would trow them out in a second.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Totally free, no ads on the site or stream. I get people emailing me all the time asking where they can buy that song/album that just played. Many times they can buy it directly from the band or indy label. People arnt buying less music, they are buying less generic top 40 from big labels.
Part of the steep drop in sales came long before the lawsuits, and I suspect that it had a lot to do with the fact that about 10 years ago, pretty much every bit of music in the back catalogs had been made available for sale, and everyone who wanted that music had already acquired it.
Then, because CDs were not only generally more resistant to damage, but were also able to be backed up and shifted to different devices with no loss of quality (in general, if you assume MP3 is close enough for most situations), and you end up with at least a decade where the only music that could have any real demand was the new stuff. Until free Internet streaming really hit big, there wasn't much advertising for the new music, so sales dropped. At that point, consumers already had the ability to only purchase the very best individual tracks, so total revenue dropped.
Now, the record companies want to kill their best advertising, and once they do that, revenues will drop again. Since the record companies can't comprehend a world where people might not want to listen to (much less pay for) every bit of new dreck that is produced, they will again decide that piracy is the only possible reason that music isn't being purchased.
It absolutely amazes me that is never occurs to them the real reason why no one is buying music -- there isn't anything worth buying.
Part of the steep drop in sales came long before the lawsuits, and I suspect that it had a lot to do with the fact that about 10 years ago, pretty much every bit of music in the back catalogs had been made available for sale, and everyone who wanted that music had already acquired it.
Then, because CDs were not only generally more resistant to damage, but were also able to be backed up and shifted to different devices with no loss of quality (in general, if you assume MP3 is close enough for most situations), and you end up with at least a decade where the only music that could have any real demand was the new stuff. Until free Internet streaming really hit big, there wasn't much advertising for the new music, so sales dropped. At that point, consumers already had the ability to only purchase the very best individual tracks, so total revenue dropped.
Now, the record companies want to kill their best advertising, and once they do that, revenues will drop again. Since the record companies can't comprehend a world where people might not want to listen to (much less pay for) every bit of new dreck that is produced, they will again decide that piracy is the only possible reason that music isn't being purchased.
THE MUSIC IS OVER PRICED I AM NOT PAYING $20.00 FOR A SINGLE CD. I will pay a max of $10.00 period! I would prefer CDs to cost $7.00 which would fall under the impulse buy price range. I have over 300 dvds all bought because they where 5 and 10 bucks. Impulse buys. When you start getting to $20.00 a purchase you evaluate its worth and realize its not worth it. They are killing themselves and blaming everything around them.
Next time you're a manager in a largely obsolete business that still has paying customers (if only for the nostalgia of physical media), just neither intimidate, rootkit-infect, alienate nor sue them.
Before they blame their shitty product and horrible marketing?
>That's like saying you'll never go back to Vivaldi after hearing Mozart...
No, because both were good. In my case, I can't say that Rihanna, who sells millions of records, is better than Washed Out. She's not.
> Music is all about taste
Sure, but there's also a common denominator threshold. When you cross it, things sound kitsch.
It's like watching "Lost in Space", and then you started watching "Babylon 5", after someone transported the tapes back to 1967 for you. After you go Babylon 5, and see how much DEPTH there's there, you will find the rest of 1967's TV boring as hell.
Same with music. Yes, there are tastes, but what I tried to communicate goes beyond tastes. For example, the "taste" paradigm would work for me when thinking that I like "Surfer blood", but I don't like "Toro Y Moi" -- both pretty hipster artists otherwise. But when it comes to Rihanna and Surfer Blood, then that's not a matter of taste anymore, because we're talking about two different WORLDS. Two different products: one's music, the other one's not!
I have not bought any music in years, because I have enough already (3000 tracks ripped to my winamp player). Maybe other people are in a similar state? And in my opinion, "Rap is Crap", most of it I refuse to listen to.
Oh and the ever decreasing "talent".
I used to buy between 10 and 12 CDs a year five or so year ago. Now I buy one or two songs. Times are tough and the product is rubbish. Music industry - do your homework, quit your whining, change or die.
I just can't be bothered.
I think it has a lot to do with recorded music itself not being a social experience like it used to be.
I used to buy and listen to a lot of music because listening to music was a social event where friends would gather, hang-out, and listen to music together.
I very rarely have experiences like that anymore.
Things like going over to someone's house because they had a great stereo.
I am sure those who loved knitting bees or some other past social outlet experienced much of the same thing only there wasn't a YIAA (Yarn Industry Artists Association) suing them for copying knitting patterns.
I now spend most of my at home time reading and communicating with friends online, and when my friends do come over craving some electronic entertainment, we play video games and watch movies.
Music just never enters into the social event unless it is the social event (live music) or something like going out to a bar, dancing, or to a party and then the music is already ubiquitously provided instead of being personally collected.
Maybe the alternatives are just better and people are consuming what brings them the experiences they want, which unfortunately for the recording industry, happens to not be their products.
because it's never their fault. Oh no.
http://rocknerd.co.uk/?p=1368
My house has teenagers in it. They are actively interested in music, read Kerrang! (which is now a land of sensitive boys with floppy fringes ripping off bad Metallica solos) and are in every way the desperately desired target demographic of the music industry in general. They get music off YouTube. They use it as their jukebox. Quite a bit from official label channels.
The kids don’t listen to radio, or any similar controlled stream fed to them by a consumption model. The dilemma is how to advertise the music without people being able to hear it first. Or something. Crupnick suggests creating a form of “artificial scarcity.” Let me know how that works out for you.
“We never really made the digital transformation,” says Crupnick. No shit.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
It is expensive and I don't have the time to listen. I don't need to have music around me any longer. I used to like it, but me thinks it's a distraction now. My behavior has changed during the last ten years, I simply don't listen to as much music as I did ten years ago.
People who enjoy creating music will continue to create music. Just as those who enjoy art will continue to create art. Music will never die. Period. End of story. This whole issue revolves around who can distribute that music to as wide an audience as possible. The wider you get, the more popular you get, and the more money you can make, but once you cross that line it's about diminishing returns. Welcome to the future.
Where are those figures from? I haven't seen them before and they're pretty damning. Seeing where and how it dropped between those extremes would be interesting too.
One of the interesting developments is the return of the true Pirate radio stations. The concept of a DJ actually loving music, being in control and playing what they think is the best stuff has been so neglected, for decades, that it is actually revolutionary now. It exists out there in what are true Pirate radio stations, because anyone can now make a internet radio stream. Sometimes my friends do this when we're chatting online, but out there on the high seas of the web, there are Pirate internet radio stations that have become popular with people in the know. Places where music comes first; seemingly the only places out there where that's true. They may be difficult to find, sometimes in closed communities, but if you love music, you'll find them.
Funnily enough, they tend to never play RIAA or BPI music. There's so much amazing music out there, it's never been a better time for it, you just won't find it very often within those two rotted corpses.
I wonder what the yearly profts are on 8-track sales these days?
When a new, better format is launched, people tend to abandon the old format. CDs killed off cassettes (and to a lesser extent vinyl), and now digital audio is killing of CDs.
Digital music is a game changer. The majority of the costs of old-style formats dissapears, for one. People simply won't be willing to spend £15 on a newly released album in digital format, whereas they would on CD.
The music industry cocked up at the start of the digital revolution by failing to get with the programme and producing decen revenue strams. Instead of HMV or Sony being as dominant in internet sales as they were in conventional sales, instead we've got a whole bunch of new-media companies controlling the market (Google, Apple, Spotify, etc,). They now control the price and distribution (and are making tidy profits, in their own ways), and there's no way for the old-media companies to wrest back control.
No-one cried when the buggy-whip manufacturers finally went under- capitalism should polish off these dinosaurs too, and leave the way clear for companies that know how to play the new games.
You may want to check this chart. Source is RIAA, so take with some grains of salt. Also note that this is dollars, not volume so both price and units shipped will affect it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Never heard of the site before today, went exploring. Found a bunch of artists I would likely never of heard of and £30 later I think I trebled whatever every artist was asking for and even then thought it was cheap. Before today I hadn't bought any music since Florence & the Machine came out.
My only criticism of the site is it doesn't seem to make finding albums by the same artist easy and doesn't provide a lit of "other people also bought..".
They'd love us to be back in the bad old days, where the cost of entry was high and they completely controlled distribution because ONLY they could make the little plastic disks. They used to have a cool deal going on: radio stations promote records for free (or some. Ahem. "Consideration"), the music would sell, and the system would feed itself. Now, the radio stations won't take any risks (since they're all owned by a few companies who overpaid for them and have huge payments to make). The record companies will sue anything that moves and wants money from the radio stations who might have promoted their Lady Gaga like garbage for free, and then they whine every time that somebody tries to give the public something close to what it wants. I wish that they'd hurry up an go out of business so that somebody with half a clue can get things going again. I mean, how do you blow this?
Exactly, they are essentially trying to sell something of unlimited supply for a very high price. And they have to compete for the limited amounts of money consumers have for entertainment. The music industry needs to figure out how to lower their costs. Maybe fire all their RIAA lawyers. In fact, I hope all successful artists go independent and take control of their profits.
when i was a teenager in the late 1960s & early 1970s I spent quite a bit on music, nowadays music is very low on my priorities, i rather spend my money on food & shelter, gas & oil for my car, clothes & etc...etc...
besides after the RIAA went sue happy on downloaders i tend to not want to buy products from companies that treat their customers like criminals. so fuck the movie and music industry i hope they suffer and die a painful death
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I used to regularly buy a CD or two a week, but all the good local music stores have closed leaving chain stores full of pap - if I don't regularly browse I'm just not going to buy.
Sure I could buy on line but I really don't get the opportunity to find new stuff that interests me Pandora doesn't stream outside the US and besides buying from Amazon from outside the US is really expensive - and of course one can't buy from iTunes from a linux box because of Apple's lousy support
People aren't buying your product because your product isn't music. It's noise. Lousy noise, at that.
When you learn how to master a CD without succumbing to the loudness wars, let me know.
Also, when you learn to hire people with musical talent instead of the hacks you hire for looks these days, let me know. Until then you don't have a product I want.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
...but it's not available in your region. I try to give you my money and you won't take it, and you wonder why?!
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
They really read Kerrang!? When even Axl Rose thinks you're a sellout, you're definitely a sellout. (ObDisclaimer: I grew up listening to Appetite. Dated.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I at least given credit to Blockbuster. They saw the writing on the wall and are at least trying to change their business model. Yes they have to close over a third of their stores, yes they still can't compare to Netflix/Redbox/Internet, but they are at least trying. Not going to be an overnight change to put them back into the number one slot for video rentals.
... definitely missed the ball on digital music and iTunes snatched that up. Definitely missed the ball on Youtube/Internet Radio Streaming. Is it too much to ask they ask think forwards instead of backwards, like every other company who plans on staying in business and remaining competitive?
Music industry
From my point of view in the UK, streaming music is the least of the record companies problems.......
1. CD's have not got appreciably cheaper despite manufacturing costs having become so.
2. Online stores that sell individual tracks have got more expensive (and the media companies enforce their region cartels to stop shopping around for tracks).
3. CD's keep on getting remastered and the sound quality gets butchered because the record companies seem to think I like their idiotic loudness war. I return CD's like this.
4. Compilation CD's are also remastered sound (see point3 ).
5. Tracks from online stores still do not offer FLAC as default.
6. I have more important things to spend my money on.
7. These days, record companies push what is laughably described as music, more descriptive to say it's noise.
8. If your "artists" need to strip to their g-strings in videos and concerts to sell stuff, you should have figured by now your business is totally screwed.
9. Not one song I can recall from mid-1990's onwards can ever become a classic, they are just cr@p. Record companies have done this suicide without outside help.
All in all, I think it's obvious that I will continue to spend less and less on music. It is up to the illegal record company cartel to change their ways to make music attractive. Suing people for copying is NOT going to get more people to buy music.
I have no sympathy for the position the film and music companies have got THEMSELVES in.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Instead of using their war chest to buy politicians to shut down a free advertiser (Pandora) they show lobby to help restore the middle class. Limited music choices is a bad enough reason no to buy, but having no discretionary spending is first on my list for not buying music this year.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
Of course bad, boring, unoriginal and soulless music can't possibly be the problem. Trying to charge too much money can't be the problem either. Treating your customers as if they are thieves can't be the problem, nope... Suing innocent moms and pops for infringement and demanding 10 million dollars for each downloaded song can't possibly be the problem either.
Oh right, it's Pandora's fault!
They really read Kerrang. I bought them both subscriptions for Christmas. Its coverage these days is emo brats (for the emo brat readers), because the music is bad sub-metal with bad sub-Metallica solos. It's what the kids read these days instead of Smash Hits. Stickers and posters all over their bedrooms and computers.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
did music execs think of the all too real possibility that music today sucks and has practically no talent what so ever.....that they have pretty much ruined music with their commercial bull shit ....of course they have done nothing wrong for music to decline so rapidly....always gotta point the finger at someone else besides yourself right.
They are one of the few industries that tries to adapt to a changing market to keep their customer base. Rather than try to see how technology is changing or where the market is transitioning and move their business model to accomodate those changes, they sit back and complain that new technology is hampering their old way of doing business and they'd rather figure out a way to stop it.
Maybe they should act like a real corporation?
I listen to Pandora about half of each day at work. When I reach my 40 hour monthly limit I switch to last.fm. I get exposed to some music I would never have heard on the radio, which is nice, and its almost CD-quality. But I don't actually ever buy any of it. Why should I, when I can listen to it on Pandora/last.fm for free?
I just download Blalock's Monthly playlist and listen to it on my iPhone http://blalocksirp.com/
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your politician, and hitting them?"
Youtube is usually a good way to try some song whose title you've seen somewhere. But the all too common "This song is not available in your country" crap is usually a surefire way to not get me to buy anything related to that song.
Of course it's easy to access it through a proxy but why should I then still give them money after they have intentionally broken something I wanted to use?
CD's have not got appreciably cheaper despite manufacturing costs having become so.
The price of music on CD has risen noticeably slower than that of bread, milk, or motor fuel. It's also risen noticeably slower than that of labor at minimum wage. Perhaps what you're seeing is that the dollar has become cheaper. Blame Fiat for that.
The entire problem recently is simple. It is the MP3.
It has changed fundamentally how we listen to music, how we use music and how we expect to get it.
Napster wasn't just about not paying for music, it was about a different way to GET music. Only very recently has the music industry stopped the old practice of releasing a song for radio with a lead of a couple of weeks before it is available in the stores. The OLD logic was that they would advertise it through being played on the radio, create hype for the release , then have it released on a day with people queuing like they were selling iPhones or something. It worked because the consumer really didn't have much choice. There were few radio stations back then and you couldn't count on them playing the songs YOU wanted, so to hear your favorite artist when you wanted to, you needed a recording of it. Because only physical media existed this either meant buying one yourself OR getting a taped copy from someone else (and this happened a LOT, far more then the record industry would have you believe) OR borrowing an album from a friend (this happened a LOT as well).
There was no other choice, recording from radio was a lot of work and many stations talk(ed) through songs to try to stop this. The akwardness of LP's also meant people listened to music differently, you either had the radio on for casual listening OR had to flip a LP every twenty minutes or so for "serious" listening. While there were LP changers they were more expensive and couldn't play the B-side (at least mine couldn't, yes, I know I am old). The physical medium forced consumer behavior.
With the Sony Walkman this changed. While tapes had been available before, now people COULD play music on the go and HAD to make their own tapes (commercial tapes are to short). This helped create the era of the mix-tape, where people would create their own mix of music and share this as some sort of DJ on an individual basis. It made people see LP's not so much as things you listened to, but merely as containers for music which you then "downloaded" to your Walkman.
It was still a slow and akward process and the Walkman lost some of its original appeal. With the MP3 player it came back with a bang. Now people could create their own custom collection for hours upon hours of music. It changed the way people got their music.
Rather then having to buy an entire LP pre-filled with a music selection or get a friend to mix a tape during a slow process with a desired music collection, you could just pick music up from all sorts of places and use it in one long playback. Until you actually created your own tape with different music from different sources you just are not capable of understanding what a change a M3U playlist is. Just put a binary file on your MP3 player and it will be played. Guy at work has a new song? Copy it and you can listen to it. Among your collection, no quality loss like with a tape copy, no having to splice it in or create a new tape.
And because we could just take bits of music from anywhere, we did. My own early MP3 collections where a complete mix of different encoding settings and filename conventions, picking whatever song I liked from where I could find it.
AND then LISTENING to it, whenever and wherever I wanted it. Exactly the music I wanted, anytime, anyplace.
I don't just not buy music anymore, radio has all but disappeared from my life. If it wasn't for the radio on my MP3 player, I wouldn't even have a radio anymore. Oh wait, my clock radio has one and I use it because NOTHING wakes me up faster with the vile bitter hatred I need to get my day going then being woken by morning radio.
As for ads? Why should I listen to ads when I pick my own music? Ads are what we put up with on radio until something better came along. We no longer consume music this way.
And because we could pick up music anywhere, buying it is no longer an option. I had maybe a collection of 100-200 lp's. But that was build up over years and there were plen
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
A great indication that they don't even understand basic sales is that some movies on a DVD sell for $5, but in the same store the CD with the same music but without the video they price at $15. And if you buy the digital tracks individually, which is even cheaper for them, it'll cost you $20. (My in-depth investigative report* revealed there's an average of 20 songs per soundtrack)
* - I am using this term in exactly the same way most news channels do, meaning I looked at one CD and assumed it applied to everything.
This sentence no verb.
Medellin, Colombia, Commodities Markets are quickly scrambling to adjust for the unexpected winter storms over Columbia's Coca Crops, prices are expected to raise steeply due to the storm's server damage on the young crops.
Because it couldn't be their increasingly lousy product, lousy treatment of their customers, constant litigation, or better informed customers who don't wish to fund an agency that is trying to restrict our rights? Right? Right?
Clearly, it HAS to be something else. I know! How about streaming media? I'll bet that's it.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
There's less emphasis on giving listeners a full album to experience over and over on different levels, and there's more emphasis on a shallow single that people will get sick of in a week. Nobody wants to pay for an hour of shallow pop. I still buy albums of artists I like, because I appreciate music beyond the new 5 second musical phrase with a hook that sounds good in your ear for a few loops, but that's exactly what "music execs" are trying to push on the consumer (especially through manufactured music). Another win for the indies I guess.
Twinstiq, game news
"Although I admit, it's not my generations music"
You should have just stopped there, because to me that simultaneously explained and undercut everything else you subsequently wrote. If you were 30 years older, you'd like Frankie Vallie, hate rock'n'roll and think Elvis was destructive.
I have diverse musical tastes (rock, some metal, blues, some country, bluegrass, many types of electronica and produced music (techo, lounge, trip-hop, trance, DnB), some pop, classical, world). And I love a whole lot of hip-hop.
Try The Roots, or Talib Kweli, or old Fugees, Common, Oukast, Beatie Boys, Jurassic 5, Digable Planets, Nappy Roots, WuTang, Wylcef - that is all real music.
I'll get off your lawn now.
But is streaming from youtube pirating? Hell most times i find it faster to just youtube a song i want to hear than pirate the album or song. Of course its easier to just blame pirates for everything.
"The Economy sucks, stupid!"
This is the same old bitching about their profits going down while completely ignoring the bigger economic impacts.
We could have a massive Depression and the Music Execs would be hiring cheap labor to go beat up on indie artists who weren't part of the "community."
I'm not afraid to use the D word and say we just won't admit to being in a Depression unless its bigger than the great depression-- and even then we'd have to be in it for years...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
You'd think they'd learn from shoutcast who started up in 1999 has ruled the net as the new king of all media, over 30 thousands public streams and many many more private streams. They are and have always been the best way for music, you'd think the media morons would have taken notice and learned
Maybe they should turn out a better product. Phish, The Dead, and countless others have opted to walk away from traditional "record" companies and seem to be doing well with their "models". Maybe if they took their collective heads out of their asses they would regain market share
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
1) It's the RIAA's fault
2) They're most likely lying.
The RIAA is a dinosaur that is slowly dying. It's their own fault. They've spend unknown millions of dollars fighting the digital age instead of embracing it. By fighting it so feverishly like they did, they forced people to come up with solutions and as we know in the digital age, when people want something, it happens. If the RIAA would've embraced the potential digital revenue, they would have feature rich and mature delivery systems available that they control. Instead, they are running around trying to put out little fires. So instead of capitalizing on a potentially lucrative environment, they decided to attack their fan base. In addition, the changing of the model has led to a huge increase in competition for the relatively short attention span of their usual cash cows. Video games, unlimited on-demand movies, hundreds of TV channels, texting, social networking in general - the RIAA's cut of a dollar has shriveled in the past 20 years.
The RIAA seems to be very shortsighted and making a series of VERY bad moves. Now the ball is rolling downhill and they may not be able to stop their demise. I say good riddance. It's not like it's going to affect ACTUAL music that much. God forbid we lose a few autotuned teen friendly beat mixes!
As for the lying part, I doubt that I have to go into detail about that. I'm sure everyone knows that the RIAA has never been fully upfront about their true profit streams. They'll cry about how "Sales are decreasing" when it only refers to one outmoded part of their revenues. It's another reason why nobody takes them seriously anymore.
For instance, even though digital sales have skyrocketed, you hardly even hear the RIAA mention them:
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/08/global-digital-music-sales-to-overtake-physical-by-2016.ars
Please. To attribute a 50% decline in sales to music piracy is delusional. The vast majority of the people I know wouldn't even know how. Maybe people just don't want that crap.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Okay, you're a troll.
I download a shitload of music. Mostly legally, but honestly, not entirely. And in the ten years or so I've been doing that (and much more heavily in the last five, as the free culture movement and "free web alternatives" have really started to come into their own), I have bought easily twice as much music as I used to. Not as much major label stuff, because mostly I have the stuff I'd want already, or if I'm really into an artist I'll buy their new album, but that's about it. But half my CD collection now is independent and local music. Granted, that time frame was also the time frame in which I joined the workforce, so YMMV, but that's my story.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Thanks to the heavy hand and morally bankrupt behavior of the RIAA and much of the music industry, I abandoned new music all together. I simply stopped listening to it, even on the radio. I have a reasonable collection of CDs from prior to the year 2000 that I still enjoy. nI want to see the RIAA, Sony, and all the other creeps in the industry go out of business !
I don't download music off the Internet and I don't borrow CDs from anyone outside of the family. When the music industry stops lobbying to destroy our freedoms, and starts treating both their customers and the musicians with some respect I'll again start purchasing music again. Until then, the industry won't get a dime from me nor any attention. .
Well, maybe there's something wrong with their promotional tools. MTV used to be the place where you would go to hear the latest and greatest... now it's the place you go to see spoiled dumbass brats turning 16 and Ozzy yelling at cats and dogs... you can't blame people for tuning out.
Also, music has gone to hell (no, I'm not really old or anything).
I stopped downloading music after they managed to lobby through a stricter law prohibiting it. Oh. I stopped buying music at the same time too. Unfortunately I listen to a lot less music now than before. (Although Spotify has increased it a bit, but not to the previous levels).
I bought one CD for myself last year and actually felt bad about it.
It is what it is.
When the RIAA started suing their customers, It enraged me. I knew nothing of Napster or Audio Galaxy, but I learned quickly. The majority of my music today remains those hundreds of old MP3's I pirated back in the early 2000's. I haven't bought music since, but I probably wouldn't have anyway. The fact is the RIAA lawsuits stimulated me to stop "upgrading" my music collection and begin pirating it.
I'm just wondering how many other people did the same thing.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
When will the execs learn that they add no value, and that consumers are tired of subsidizing their coke habits? Artificial scarcity won't work, because people will just pirate it.
No, I will not work for your startup